


Message In A Bottle

by glasscannon



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Max owns half of Nassau, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Season/Series 03, Pre-ship, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, Shippy if you Squint, aka the Spanish man-o-war, pirate!Abigail, set in the months missing between s2 and s3, the pirate ship Revenge, vague and likely inaccurate references to tallship sailing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 11:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10989591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/glasscannon
Summary: As their launch reached the jetty, Billy realized Max from the Inn was waiting for them, one hand on her hip and the other holding a small square of folded papers, sealed in red wax.“You are going to want to see this,” she said, holding the letter out to Flint as soon as he was off the boat, Billy close on his heels.





	Message In A Bottle

Their return to Nassau was meant to be merely a resupply stop before they were out on the hunt again — there’d been hangings in two more port colonies in the time since they’d turned back for New Providence alone — but as their launch reached the jetty, Billy realized Max from the Inn was waiting for them, one hand on her hip and the other holding a small square of folded papers, sealed in red wax.

“You are going to want to see this,” she said, holding the letter out to Flint as soon as he was off the boat, Billy close on his heels.

“What is it?” Flint asked, taking it from Max. Billy waved the others on towards town but stayed with the Captain as Max answered.

“It is addressed to M. Barlow, but arrived at the _tavern_ earlier this week. I do not recognize the seal, but I thought perhaps you might,” Max said.

Flint turned the small folded bundle over in his hands just as Billy’s eyes caught on the neat lettering on the front, the handwriting striking him as familiar somehow. The wax seal on the other side, however, Billy had never seen, but from the Captain’s expression, he seem to have. Flint broke the seal and unfolded the letter.

His eyes sped across the sheaves, quickly reading whatever was contained there, his scowl increasing and his gaze flickering to Billy and back to the letter once.

“Dearest Miranda,” Flint read aloud after a moment, his voice flat. “I’ve not heard from you in so long and miss you terribly, but I wanted to give you my news while I still may, and so you may pass along word to James and William, I would hate for them to worry.” Here he paused and held Billy’s gaze for a moment before continuing to read. “After so many months of being shuttled between Savannah and the rubble that was Charles Town, it has finally been decided that the New World holds no place for me now, and I am being sent back to England much as I left it: with very little choice in the matter. Still, I will be glad to be on the ocean again, as my memories of our time at sea together are such happy ones, you and I and James and William and the others.

“I sail the first of the month,” he went on reading, “on the _Estell_ out of Savannah, and I understand we are to make stops in Philadelphia and Boston before making the north Atlantic crossing to England. With no friendly faces on board to keep me company this voyage, I shall think of you all daily, I’m sure. I hope you are each well in this trying time, and I would dearly love to hear from any of you, at your leisure. Until then I remain, your loyal friend, Abigail Ashe.”

Flint looked up at Billy when he finished reading, holding his gaze for a long moment. “You saw her journal, didn’t you?” he asked, handing Billy the pages. “What do you think, is it her handwriting?”

Billy studied the letter for a minute, trying to keep his focus to the shape and slant of the characters, and not on the way they formed _William_. “I think so, Captain,” he said, giving the papers back so he wouldn’t be tempted to look at them again. “Best as I can remember, looks like her handwriting.”

“Could it be a trap?” Max asked, looking between them. “Could the English be using this girl to lure you in?”

Flint shook his head before Billy could give the question serious thought. “Not this girl, not writing like this,” he said. “She was very close to Miranda, and inconsolable after her death, for which she held her father responsible. If you’re certain this is her handwriting,” he said to Billy, “I am certain these are her words, and I do not believe she’d have written in this manner if she knew it was a trap.”

“Sounds to me like this is a request for a rescue, then, Captain,” Billy said when Flint didn’t continue. “She gave us everything we need to find her, more or less. Why else would she do that? Why else would she write in the first place?”

“Addressed to M. Barlow, care of the tavern, no less. She was hoping to reach you, and trying to ensure no one else knew of it,” Max said, as Flint re-read the letter.

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” he said after a moment, looking up to glance between the two of them. “The question now is what we plan to do about it.”

“Shit, what’s the date today?” Billy asked.

“The first was yesterday,” Max said. “You will have to catch them out of Philadelphia. If there is record of the _Estell_ anywhere on this island, I will find it and have it to you by sundown.”

“See to the resupply,” Flint said to Billy, already folding the letter and beginning to turn back towards the launch boat. “I’ll return to the ship and speak with Silver and Mr. DeGroot and begin to chart our course. Let’s be underway as quickly as we can, I’d prefer not to chase her all the way to Boston.”

“Yes, Captain,” Billy said, nodding, and turned to follow Max towards Nassautown.

* * *

They were two days out of Philadelphia when the man on watch in the crow’s nest yelled, “Sails! Sou’-south-east!”

Abigail looked up from her embroidery, but didn’t turn toward the rail, as some passengers had; the ship would be too small to see without an spyglass for some time, and she knew better than to look hopefully toward every ship that sailed within a league of her own. She knew better than to appear hopeful at the sight of sails at all.

For the next hour, Abigail kept her eyes on her needlework, but her ears open to the calls shouted from mast to deck, thanking her time upon Captain Flint’s warship _Revenge_ for acquainting her with the inner workings of a ship at sea in ways her crossing from England had not. She tallied up the information in her mind while keeping her face carefully blank:

_The unknown ship was distant but seemed to be using the same wind they were._

_The ship was gaining on them, with a bearing to match._

_Three masts, with at least a hundred guns, not flying colors._

The captain was uneasy but hiding it better than the crew, and Abigail kept her attention firmly fixed to her embroidery.

The general sense of worry spread to the passengers when the ship was close enough to clearly make out the large red Spanish crosses on the foresail and mainsail, and Abigail finally allowed herself another glance at the still-distant ship. She knew only too well from how far away those kinds of sails could be seen, but even at this distance, the similarities to her memory were striking enough that Abigail had to force herself to look away and smother the fragile hope dancing in her chest.

It had been a message in a bottle, nothing more. A letter born of desperation cast into the distance on the smallest chance that perhaps someone would find it and send help for her, though she at least had the benefit of sending it via ship, addressed and sealed, rather than trusting a bottle on the ocean currents to deliver her plea. Abigail had regretted leaving the _Revenge_ before she had been in her father’s home more than a few hours, and if ever there would be a time to correct that mistake, surely this would be it.

But she had no right to hope, no right to think that her gamble might pay off, no right to expect her letter would find its way into the appropriate hands. And no right to think, even if it did, that the man from whom so much had been taken in her name would care to rescue her from her circumstances.

Abigail stabbed at her embroidery, counted the minutes, and refused to hope. It could still be another merchant ship, same as every other they had encountered since leaving Savannah. It could be simply a well-armed Spanish galleon, she thought, as the familiar lines of the hull came into better focus off their starboard quarter. Even official Spanish business wouldn’t be unheard of this far north, though something in her practiced eye thought this ship lacked the crispness of a Navy vessel. It could be any number of things, hundreds of explanations why a Spanish man of war might have set a course to intercept them that had nothing at all to do with her personally.

It could be anything, or nothing, and certainly no reason to hope.

“Pirates!” the watchman in the crow’s nest called. “They’re flying the black!”

On the deck below him, Abigail dropped her needlework to her lap and closed her eyes for a moment, then turned her face into the wind and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of pirate!Abigail Ashe has sort of grabbed me by the shoulders and refused to let go. I have a much longer Ashebones story in the works, but Abigail sending a letter didn't fit with that one, so this little sequence got to be its own thing.


End file.
